I am pretty sure you guys are familiar with the PC game called The Sims. Now, you might ask what the connection of The Sims is with this blog about German tourism. Well, it's just that I was playing the said game on my
dependable laptop computer just a few moments ago. It suddenly dawned on me that the gibberish language that the Sim characters are uttering sounded German. That is, if you are not familiar with the German language. Actually, you may misinterpret it for all other foreign languages that you aren't familiar with. As I've said, the language used in the said game is gibberish. Anyway, I decided to research about the history of the German language.
It seems that the German language originated from
Indo-European languages. The German language used to depart from what we call the 1st Germanic Sound Shift. However, the German language that we now know have departed by some shifting sounds coined as 2nd Germanic Sound Shift. These departures came from other Germanic languages like Dutch, Scandinavian, English, and even the Gothic language. The effects of such shifts in sounds may still be observed in some comparisons between the English words and German counterparts. Take for example the word "pipe." Pipe is "pfeife" in German. Another example is apple, which is "apfel."
I also learned that the German language has many dialects. However, these dialects are not really mutually intelligible in general.
